In this story there are three things to be noticed:
I. The cowardice of guilt. Ahab quailed before Elijah like a coward and a slave. A guilty conscience can make a coward even of a king.
II. Friends mistaken for enemies. Ahab called Elijah his enemy. He thought him his enemy because he did not encourage him in his sins, as others did, but reproved him and tried to turn him from them. There are people who take God for their Enemy, just as Ahab called Elijah by this name. Surely sin can never deceive us so completely as when it leads us to this horrible mistake.
III. Enemies disguised as friends. Ahab thought Jezebel his friend when she got him the vineyard he coveted. He thought the magistrates his friends who so basely put Naboth to death. He thought the prophets of Baal his friends who feasted at his table and flattered him with their smooth tongues. He thought them his friends, but they were his worst enemies. You may be sure he is a false friend who encourages you to act contrary to the wishes of your parents and to the wishes of your Father in heaven.
J. Stalker, The New Song, and Other Sermons for the Children's Hour,p. 181.
I. We see here, in the first place, this broad principle.: pleasure won by sin is peace lost. While sin is yet tempting us it is loved; when sin is done, it is loathed. Naboth's blood stains the leaves of Naboth's garden. Elijah is always waiting at the gate of the ill-gotten possession.
II. Sin is blind to its true friends and its real foes. Elijah was the best friend Ahab had in the kingdom. Jezebel was the worst tempter that hell could have sent him. This is one of the certainest workings of evil desires in our own spirits, that they pervert to us all the relations of things, that they make us blind to all the truths of God's universe. Sin, perverted and blinded, stumbles about in its darkness, and mistakes the friend for the foe and the foe for the friend. Sin makes us fancy that God Himself is our Enemy.
III. The sin that mistakes the friendly appeal for an enemy lays up for itself a terrible retribution. Elijah comes here and prophesies the fall of Ahab. The next peal, the next flash, fulfil the prediction. In Jezreel Ahab died; in Jezreel Jezebel died. If we will not listen to God's message and turn at its gentle rebuke, then we gather up for ourselves an awful futurity of judgment.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester,1861, p. 265 (see also 1st series, p. 222).
Here we see God's providential care even of such a person as Ahab, so utterly given up to all manner of wickedness. It is a very fearful picture, yet full of mercy and encouragement to true repentance.
I. In God's dealings with Ahab we see a great law of His universal providence: not usually to leave sinners at ease in their sins. This is His great and unspeakable mercy to those who least seem to deserve it. Left to themselves, they must surely perish, but God does not leave them to themselves.
II. Neither need we doubt what His meaning is in so doing. He wills them to repent; He would not have them die. The untoward accidents, the unexpected turns, the strange and sudden failures, which happen to them, are so many checks from His fatherly hand, so many calls to a better mind.
III. Even Ahab's small beginning of repentance is so far pleasing to Almighty God that in consideration of it He promises to bring the destruction of his house, not in Ahab's days, but in his son's days. Who knows how much greater mercy might have been shown him had his repentance continued and grown deeper? God finds us, as Elijah found Ahab, not as an Enemy, though His first sternness may well alarm such as we are, but as our true and only-sufficient Friend.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to" Tracts for the Times" vol. viii., p. 158 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Sundays after Trinity,Part I., p. 383).
I. That which first of all blinded Ahab to the true character and extent of his responsibility for the death of Naboth was the force of desire. A single desire, long dwelt upon, cherished, and indulged, has a blinding power which cannot easily be exaggerated. Desire is not always wrong in its early stages, and so long as it is under control of principle it is a useful motive power in human life. But when it finds itself in conflict with the rights of other men and, above all, in conflict with the laws and with the rights of God, it must be suppressed, unless it is to lead to crime. When Naboth declined to sell or exchange his vineyard, Ahab should have ceased to desire it. Desire is to the human soul what gravitation is to the heavenly bodies. In St. Augustine's memorable words, " Quocumque feror amove feror."
II. A second cause which may have blinded Ahab to the true character of his responsibility for the murder of Naboth was the ascendant influence and prominent agency of his queen, Jezebel. Ahab was bad and weak; Jezebel was worse and strong. Ahab could not have enjoyed the results of Jezebel's achievement and decline the responsibility for it; yet no doubt he was more than willing to do this, more than willing to believe that matters had drifted somehow into other hands than his, and that the upshot, regrettable, no doubt, in one sense, but in another not altogether unwelcome, was beyond his control. False conscience constantly endeavours to divest itself of responsibility for what has been done through others, or for what others have been allowed by us to do.
III. The third screen which may have blinded Ahab to the real state of the case was the perfection of the legal form which had characterised the proceedings. The old religious forms had been respected; the constitutional authorities had put the law in motion. Nothing could have been so very far wrong when ancient rule and living administration combined to bring about a practical result, and Ahab might well let the matter rest and enjoy the vineyard of Naboth.
Law is a great and sacred thing; but when the machinery of law is tampered with, as was, no doubt, the case with Jezebel, its remaining force is the exact measure of its capacity for mischief and for wrong. Then, indeed, if ever, " summum jus summa injuria."
From this story let us carry away two lessons: (1) the first to keep all forms of desire well under control; (2) for us Christians, the event or the man who discovers us to ourselves should be held to be, not our enemy, but our friend.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 113.
It is thus that sinners regard God's messenger. He is their enemy. He may be discharging a solemn duty reluctantly, unwillingly, with great pain to himself and kindness in his heart; it matters not if he carries God's message, if he speaks the truth, if he loves righteousness, he is regarded as an enemy by one who will not be saved.
I. God's messengers to us are various. Sometimes He sends a man to us, addresses the sinner by a human voice, and confronts him face to face with the minister of righteousness. When the Christian pastor seeks to speak in God's behalf to persons sunk in sin and to warn them, as they would escape from the wrath to come, to cleanse themselves while they can from that which is provoking God's judgment every day, how often is he reminded in his own experience of Ahab's speech to Elijah! "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" may be the language of the manner, if not of the lips.
II. But God's messengers are not all men; and the chief power of the human messenger lies in his close connection with another, not of flesh and blood. The prophet was Ahab's enemy just because he was in concert with an enemy. The real enemy was not he, but conscience. Once let a man break loose from God, once let him give himself up to his self-will, lead him where it may, and forthwith increasingly, at last utterly, he will find his conscience his foe.
III. If it seems strange that any one should count his own conscience as an enemy, is it not yet more wonderful that the same feeling should ever be shown towards the very Gospel of grace, towards the Saviour of sinners Himself? Yet there are multitudes of persons who pass through life regarding our Lord Jesus Christ as an Enemy. They are afraid of Him, and therefore they keep Him at a distance; they know that one day they will want Him, but they almost deliberately defer seeking Him till the late hour of a deathbed repentance.
IV. Human nature, and each several part of it, has an enemy; but it is just that one which counterfeits the voice and professes the interest of a friend. That one enemy is sin. If Ahab had said to Jezebel when she came to tempt him, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" he would have had no cause to say it to Elijah when he came to judge.
C. J. Vaughan, Lessons of Life and Godliness,p. 186.
References: 1 Kings 21:20. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xi., p. 18; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 326. 1 Kings 21:20-25, Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 101.